


All the Wrong Places

by nookienostradamus



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Bad Fashion Choices, Bible Quotes, Bickering, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Hilarious Blasphemy, Crime, Demonic Possession, Fingering, Genesis - Freeform, Gore, History, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Interesting Local Citizens, Jazz - Freeform, M/M, Nostalgia, Peril, References to the comics, Serial Killers, absurdity, in-universe, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:09:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11700858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/pseuds/nookienostradamus
Summary: Two days in the Big Easy and Jesse Custer is fed up with everyone. But time's wasting, so while Tulip is missing, he and Cassidy go God-hunting. They get a tip-off from a one-eyed bartender, and Cassidy convinces Jesse that it's worth looking into. Turns out a killer once walked the city streets, spreading fear with his bloody axe in hand. Legend has it that he wasn't a man, but the Devil himself...and he comes back every year to haunt New Orleans for one terrifying night. Armed with the angel-demon spawn Genesis, Jesse and Cassidy set out to confront Lucifer and demand the whereabouts of the Almighty. What they get into is a whole lot more than they bargained for, and it forces both of them to take a hard look at the path they've chosen.





	All the Wrong Places

**Author's Note:**

> Show-focused, but borrows from the comics. Kind of an "alternate episode." Includes both New Orleans history and some pure invention.

Having been chock-full of good intentions and renewed energy, it was fair to say that Jesse had felt a little abandoned since that first night in the Big Easy. As it was abundantly clear that “Great Guy Denis” wasn’t, after all, yearning to crack a couple cold ones and get nostalgic with his buddy, he had Cassidy to drag along this time. Mardi Gras was three weeks past and most of the trash had been swept up from Bourbon Street. Fat tourists still carried yard-long margaritas—they just came in smaller groups and probably had less VD.

Cassidy was in high spirits, knocking fraternity dudes in pastel sweaters with the occasional stray elbow as he whirled around trying to absorb the sights.

Jesse felt like he needed one of those harness-and-leash contraptions that housewives put on their toddlers in the supermarket. It was six o’clock in the evening, and someone had already almost vomited on his boots.

At the corner, Cassidy paused to stub out his cigarette against a brick wall decorated with a mural. It left an ash smudge in the painted bell of a saxophone. He dropped the butt into a half-full drink put on the sidewalk by a blonde girl fumbling in her purse. “Jus’ you an’ me, eh? Like a stag night!”

Jesse scowled and squinted toward the end of the street, loath to be reminded. Tulip had begged off. Probably the wrong way to put it; Tulip didn’t beg. She just clammed up and refused to leave the grimy apartment, her damp curls wrapped in a towel from the shower and a years-old copy of _Garden & Gun _ magazine dug up from a dusty corner.

Cassidy finally took off his sunglasses. Twilight was a greenish smudge over the low buildings. “Somethin’ on yer mind?”

Jesse turned on his heel. He figured he probably had more connections to New Orleans than either of the others, but he was the only one not letting the heady Louisiana funk put him off his game. “Something on _yours_? You and Tulip have been antsy as a couple of thieves in a shotgun factory ever since we stepped foot in this town.”

“Me?” Cassidy said, putting his hand to his chest in affront. The shirt he wore had a jumping pastel dolphin on it, along with the words _Sea You Later!_ “I’m calm and collected. The sun’s down an’ I’m ready ta kick back in the city o’ sin.”

“Sin City’s Vegas,” Jesse said, catching a chunk of asphalt with the silver-capped toe of his boot and launching it toward the curb.

“I _hate_ Vegas.”

That was unexpected for someone like Cassidy, but Jesse kept his mouth shut on the matter. Anything he said could be mistaken for actual interest, and he was all out of patience for rambling tales in the middle of the French Quarter.

There was a shriek and a splash a few feet away as the blonde dumped her contaminated drink.

Sighing, Jesse pinched the bridge of his nose.

Cassidy shrugged. “Long story fer another time. Let’s just say it involves a contortionist from the former Soviet Union an’ more than a few bags of uncut china white.” He pushed back his jacket sleeve, checking a skinny wrist. Cassidy had never worn a watch. “So where to, Padre? I’m on yer time.”

“From what I figure, we’ve still got fifty-eight jazz clubs to cover.” Jesse fought the urge to wave a hand in front of Cassidy’s face. _God, remember? Ring a bell?_

After looking over one shoulder then the other, Cassidy tipped his head toward a corner joint. It was small and pumped tinny music out into the night. “Whatabout this one?”

Irked, Jesse stepped up onto the sidewalk. A glance into the dim ash-smelling room showed no stage or seating—just a grimy jukebox. As they watched the machine, a thin, metal arm descended and hooked a shiny CD from the array. When it hit the tray, the opening strains of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” floated toward them.

“Oh, good one!” Cassidy said. He launched into tuneless song. “ _An’ I think it’s gonna be a long, long time…_ ”

That’s what Jesse was afraid of. He shook his head and set out down a side street, past the bar, listening for the thump of Doc Martens. For being a wily predator of the night, Cassidy sure could set up a ruckus.

The noises of drunkenness thinned out behind him as he walked. Along the little _rue_ was an art gallery that had closed up shop for the night, and a tastefully curtained but obvious adult video store. A calico cat with a pink collar and bell slipped out from behind a potted topiary. It paused to hiss at something unseen, then dashed off down an alley.

Jesse’s heartbeat picked up a little when he heard a howling, lonesome-sounding saxophone. But it was only a Bluetooth speaker dropping notes onto the sidewalk from an open window. The light inside was warm and as he passed, he swore he smelled pecan pie, making him _intensely_ homesick. No more potlucks, no more church. No more Annville. Not that the town had been “home” more than any other place. The closest thing he had right now was the constant presence of his traveling companions. He and Tulip had come out through all the past lies and blow-ups—as young, dumb kids then only slightly less clueless adults. They were stuck together with some atomic force, planets blocked by the occasional eclipse but never out of each other’s orbit.

It looked like Cassidy had swung into their little system for the long run, too, hanging on stubborn like a burr. It’d be uncharitable and untrue to say he didn’t pull his weight when needed. Yet even with Cassidy along for the ride that night, Jesse couldn’t shake the ugly feeling of having been hung out to dry.

Nothing to do but push forward. Eye on the prize. No mistaking that Jesse Custer was good and pissed at the Esteemed Creator of the Universe, as well. Dashing out like a kid sneaking from an upstairs window to slam cheap beer in the woods. Damn shameful.

“Hold up, then,” Cassidy said out of nowhere.

“What?” Jesse scowled at being jogged from his reverie.

“D’ye hear that?”

Jesse tamped his raucous thoughts and listened. Far away, the roar of an unmufflered jalopy roared and then faded. He shook his head.

“It’s music,” Cassidy said. “Not up on all me jazz. Was blotto for a good deal o’ the twenties, ta be honest. But it might be worth checkin’ out.”

To Jesse, the night was still stubbornly quiet. Still, he said, “Lead the way.”

It took four or more blocks before Jesse’s ears could even pick up the faint notes. But there it was, sure enough: a trumpet and mute, wailing solo. As they got closer, Jesse was able to make out an upright bass keeping time. The music led the two pilgrims to a door that had been carved out of a stone wall. A sign made of cut tin and backlit blue was fastened to one side. It read: _Le Caveau_.

Jesse looked up at Cassidy, who shrugged.

The last note died out and applause rose as they went in. Jesse only sort of noticed that Cassidy had whacked his head on the low entrance; he was already focused. Stone steps led down from the doorway into a basement space: a half-circle with an arc-shaped bar jutting in. Blue rope lights lined the baseboards, and there was very little other visible lighting.

No dance floor, only small cocktail tables, meant for two or three occupants tops. On the slightly raised stage, a drummer, trumpeter, and bassist nodded their heads with restrained appreciation.

A little _frisson_ seized Jesse’s heart. He felt like he was meant to find this place. He looked back at Cassidy, who was massaging his forehead, and mimed bringing a glass of something to his lips. It was greeted with a nod.

Onstage, the high hat began to whisper and the bass melded in, quick and low.

The bar was a huge burled-walnut thing protected by layers of laminate. Jesse ran his fingertips over its surface, then knocked on it twice, marveling.

“Real,” the bartender said. “Almost didn’t make it through Katrina, but some lucky fool shellacked it too much.”

Looking up, Jesse saw that the man behind the behemoth piece of wood was broad, with a thick but neatly trimmed mustache that was going gray. He also wore a plain black patch over his left eye.

“Arr, matey,” Cassidy growled, swinging onto a velvet-topped stool. “What be yer specials?”

Jesse gritted his teeth.

But the bartender only laughed. “Still scares the bejesus out of my grandkids.” He turned to Jesse, looking chastised. “Uh, didn’t mean to take the name in vain, Reverend.”

Jesse waved it away with a beneficent nod.

The bartender flipped up the patch, revealing a smooth, pink hollow. “Desert Storm,” he said.

Nodding again, Jesse said, “Thank you for your service.”

“Thanks to _you_ , Reverend. I’ll admit I almost lost God over there, seein’ the things that I saw.”

Cassidy shot Jesse a look. “That God, right? Hard ta keep track of. Look away fer a tick an’ he’s off!”

The bartender looked caught between laughter and disapproval—the latter likely for Jesse’s sake.

“What he means to say, I believe,” Jesse said, “is that doubt is part of the human condition.”

“That’s it,” Cassidy said, smiling. “A right philosopher, I am.”

“Can I get you gentlemen a libation?” asked the bartender.

“Whiskey fer me,” said Cassidy, resting his knobby elbows on the bartop. “A generous double, if ye don’t mind.”

“I’m fine,” Jesse said. “I’ve just got a question for you.”

Plunking a highball glass down in front of Cassidy, the bartender said, ”I _am_ a Christian, Reverend, if you’re asking.”

“Fine. I mean, good.” Jesse scratched at the couple of days’ worth of beard growth along his jaw. “What I want to know is have you seen God?”

The bartender nodded, slow and sage. He was pouring shot after shot into the glass, with Cassidy signaling him to keep going. “Yes, sir. In a little church in Franklin Parish, nineteen-ninety-seven. Won’t ever forget it.”

The liquid level in Cassidy’s glass was quivering near the lip.

“I mean in New Orleans,” Jesse said. “Here. _Lately_.”

The bartender’s brow furrowed. “Well, He does reveal Himself in mysterious ways. I might’ve seen evidence of His workings round about the time of the hurricanes…”

Jesse sucked his teeth. “It’s just...well, I have reason to believe that God is here in this city. As we speak.”

His glass spilling amber trails down the sides, Cassidy downed the entire thing.

Luckily, instead of giving Jesse the soft, pity-filled expression reserved for those with mental deficiencies, the bartender looked to ponder for a second—sincere, searching thought. “No, sir. I haven’t been that lucky.” He leaned in over the bar. “I can tell you what, though. I do know someone who’s seen the Devil.”

“Right,” Jesse said. “Thanks.” He began to scoot off the barstool.

“Dead serious,” the bartender said. “Swear on my grandchildren’s lives. It’s my wife who’s seen him.”

“Gotta admit, that’s a new one on me,” Cassidy said.

The bartender raised his right hand, palm facing out. “Hand to God. This woman has never told a lie in her life.”

_Everybody tells lies_ , Jesse thought. _You just never find out about some of them._ “She saw the Devil here? In the city?”

A broad smile crinkled up the polyester of the eye patch. “Oh, yeah. Runs in her family. Her mother’s seen it, and her grandmother before that.”

Cassidy raised his eyebrows and looked over. “Seem’s Satan might be a regular here.”

Ducking his head, Jesse gave a harsh whisper. “Yeah, well, we’re not looking for the Devil, remember?”

Doubling down, Cassidy said, “What if the Devil _knows_ God? They hafta coordinate who’s goin’ up an’ who’s goin’ down, right? No line o’ communication—I’d call that bad business practices.”

“Would you let me handle this, please?” Jesse said.

Cassidy held his hands up in mock surrender. “All yours, Padre.”

His expression more than a little lost, the bartender said, “I’m not sure I’m the one to help you with what you’re looking for, guys.”

Jesse forced his fingers to uncurl from his palms. “No, you’re doing fine. Does your wife work here?”

“No. She runs the Old Wisteria Guest House out in Algiers Point. Right in the middle of the historic district. I tried for a while to help her run it, but turns out I’m no good at keeping track of guests and bookings.”

“Erm, we’re new ta the city,” Cassidy chimed in. “Can ye tell us where that is?”

The bartender smiled. He retrieved a sheet of thick paper folded into a tiny square. When unfolded it showed a colorful map of the city of New Orleans. He set a meaty finger down on the curve of a peninsula. “Across the river. There’s ferries, but there’s bridges, too. House is on Elmira. I’ll write you down the address.”

As the barman turned to rip a square of blank receipt paper off the till, Jesse gave Cassidy a glare. Even though a tiny spark of hope clicked on in his chest, he was still ready to shoot down the idea of a wild goose chase after somebody’s secondhand connection to the Prince of Darkness.

“Night’s still young,” the bartender said, scribbling on the slip of paper and extending it toward Jesse. “You could head over right now. Mardi Gras season is done, so she won’t be too busy. I expect she’d like a couple of folks to chat with for a while. You could even rent a room.” He cleared his throat. “Two rooms.”

Cassidy reached across and snatched the paper. “Great, thanks.” As Jesse watched, he stuffed it in his jacket pocket and fumbled for his wallet. “D’ye have change for a hundred?”

Waving him away, the bartender said, “On me tonight, gentlemen. I think you’re in for a very interesting story. When you get there, ask for Linda. And tell her Ronald sent you over.”

“Thanks,” Jesse gritted out.

“Much obliged, Ronald,” said Cassidy.

Out on the sidewalk, the sweet music already muffled, Cassidy dug the scrap from his pocket only to have Jesse yank it away.

“So?” Cassidy prompted. “Could be a good lead, yeah? An’ all that at the first place we stopped in.”

Skepticism was raging hard against that flicker of hope. “We don’t have time for this, Cassidy. It could turn out to be nothing. A joke, a hoax. Another pervert in a dog suit.”

Cassidy was shifting quickly from foot to foot. “Sure, fair enough. But we’ll never know if we don’t try. What if the Devil really is in New Orleans?”

A dark-colored SUV passed by. Jesse took a deep breath of the exhaust-scented air. “Okay, suppose he is. It’s still no guarantee he’s in contact with God. Or knows where He’s gone. Hell, he may not even talk to us.”

Raising a forefinger, Cassidy said, “He hasn’t got a choice. Or did ye ferget about Genesis?”

There—a sweet flare of possibility. Jesse’s will to bicker was weakening despite his best efforts. “Genesis didn’t work on the Saint of Killers.”

Cassidy seemed stuck on that for a moment. “But it works on angels,” he said at last. “Far as I can recall, Lucifer was an angel once, too.” He looked down at his feet and said in a softer voice, “Plus, if nothin’ else, maybe ye can get some news about yer little friend wi’ the messed-up face.”

Livid at once, Jesse whirled on Cassidy. “Don’t you _dare_ bring up Eugene. He’s gone; end of story. So you just shut your mouth.” He smoothed the bit of receipt paper with his thumb, then took out his phone and pulled up a ride-sharing app, jabbing hard against the screen with his forefinger.

Another round of applause from within _Le Caveau_ cut into the tense silence between them. In a few minutes, a smoke-gray Cadillac pulled up to the curb.

“This is us,” Jesse said. 

 

*

 

The laconic driver let them off in front of a house with a moderately-sized wraparound porch—painted a cream color. It was crowded in its lot by neighboring houses. Early twentieth-century people didn’t seem big on lawns. The cobblestone path leading up to the front steps had a bend to it, just for show. Green vines crawled out of the soil and twined up the porch columns, straggling onto a lattice above visitors’ heads, where a few tendrils dropped down. The potted plants flanking the door were fake. Fabric leaves flipped over in the slight wind to show plastic stems. Could be that the real plants were inside; Louisiana, like Texas, had a sort-of winter.

Cassidy, who was taller by a couple of inches, hunched to duck under the vines.

To Jesse’s surprise, a motion-activated porch light showed the house’s color not as cream but a pale violet. The centerpiece of the front door was a stained-glass panel with curling vines and drooping flowers. He shot a glance back to see Cassidy scrubbing a hand over his hair. Seeing no bell, Jesse knocked on the wooden edge of the door.

No response.

Jesse cleared his throat and shifted on the planks, drawing out a creak. Another wave of inconvenient nostalgia for the Texas countryside and the broad, welcoming porches where old men sat sipping lemonade in rocking chairs.

After a few moments of silence, Cassidy piped up. “P’raps she’s jus’ gettin’ decent.”

Preparing to turn on his heel and head down the steps again, Jesse saw a light flick on in the hallway leading to the door. He straightened his spine and his collar to greet the fuzzy image that appeared behind the glass.

The hinges were oiled and quiet. In the doorway, haloed by the yellow glow of a lamp set on a skinny hall table, was a woman. She had her wavy hair pulled up in a ponytail and wore on her feet the only pair of bunny slippers Jesse had ever seen outside the movies. When she smiled, one of her smaller teeth showed dead and gray. Mostly a nice smile, though. “Good evening, Reverend.”

As he always did, Jesse felt mixed pride and shame at the title, even though he’d earned it. “Ma’am.”

The woman leaned on the door frame. “What can I do for you?” Cassidy walked back up the steps and her eyes went a little wary. “You two.”

Ducking his chin, Jesse said, “A bartender with an interesting story told us we might benefit from visiting here. Told us to ask for Linda.”

“I’m Linda,” she said. “This bartender happen to have one eye?”

“That’s the one, ma’am.”

A laugh, short but genuine. “You don’t have to call me ‘ma’am.’ And yes, that’s my Ronnie. Told you how he lost the eye, did he?”

“It wasn’t at war?” Cassidy asked.

“Oh, it was,” said Linda, picking at a spot of dried paint on her pants. “Desert Storm, like he says. Ronnie comes through the major offensive without a scratch on him. All the way to the Kuwaiti liberation. Gets a Silver Star. Two weeks before his unit’s set to pack up and go, he’s on latrine duty. Drops a cherry bomb down in there. ‘To break things up,’ he said. Turns out a big clot of the stuff comes back up and hits him straight in the face. The eye gets infected and they have to take the whole thing out. One honorable discharge later and here he is.”

“Oh, that Ronald,” Cassidy said, as if he’d known the man his whole life. “Sounds like a good time, he does.”

The smile on Linda’s face said she was warming up to Cassidy despite his off-kilter look. It annoyed Jesse just a little.

“He most certainly can be,” she said.

“How long have you two been married?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, I didn’t know him way back then. I’m actually his third wife. First for me, though. I’m a late bloomer.”

The wind shifted and Cassidy swatted a tendril of vine out of his face.

“Oh, look at me keeping you on the porch like strangers,” Linda said. “Come on in, please.”

The two of them filed by into a hallway carpeted in burgundy.

“I’m sorry about the vines,” said Linda, closing the door. This was obviously directed at Cassidy. “I keep mulling over getting rid of the trellis. But the wisteria blooms look so pretty hanging through.”

Beside the lamp on the table was one of those plastic jars full of scented beads. The label read “April Meadows.”

Noticing it, too, Cassidy poked Jesse in the ribs with a fingertip. “Wasn’t she a porn star?”

“Why don’t the two of you come into the sitting room?” asked Linda, who obviously hadn’t heard the remark. She led the way to a little parlor area with a bay window.

The fake fireplace on the far wall creeped Jesse out a bit. It had no flue, and was too shallow to use even if it did. Just a black-painted chunk taken out of the wall. The rest of the room was homey enough, though. The largest piece of furniture was a wicker loveseat, which Linda gestured to. Jesse and Cassidy were shoved so close together on it they had a brief battle over elbow space. Jesse rested his on his knees.

The wicker creaked and popped under their combined weight.

Linda bent to shake their hands in turn. “Tell me y’all’s names.”

“I’m Jesse Custer,” Jesse said. “And this here’s Mr. Cassidy.”

“Jus’ Cassidy’s fine.”

“Can I get either of you a cup of tea?” asked their host. “I normally have a cafetière out for guests. Tea and cookies every night before bed!”

“That’d be lovely,” Cassidy said.

At nearly the same time, Jesse cut in with, “No, thanks. We can’t stay too long.”

After a brief internal struggle over which answer to take, Linda at last sat down in a flocked armchair. “So, what were you talking about with Ronnie?”

Jesse couldn’t run a hand over his hair without elbowing Cassidy in the face, so he just shifted in his seat. “Well... _God_ , for one.”

“An’ the Devil,” Cassidy piped up.

“Oh,” said Linda, looking him up and down, “are you a preacher, too, Cassidy?”

“Ah, no. Just a humble sinner searchin’ fer the right path.”

There was a note of _aw-shucks_ sincerity in the statement that made Jesse fight against rolling his eyes. “Uh, without mincing words, ma’am, Ronald told us that you had, well, a run-in with the Adversary.”

Looking confused, Linda asked, “With who, now?”

“That’d be Lucifer,” Cassidy said. “Y’know, Satan. Father o’ Lies. Beelzebub.”

“Well, technically, Beelzebub is a lesser demon,” Jesse said in a whisper. “Same tier as Leviathan.”

Cassidy leaned back and balanced his right ankle on his left knee, knocking Jesse’s leg. “Well, excuse me for not bein’ up on the peckin’ order in Hell.”

“It’s just—” Jesse started. “It’s an important distinction.”

“It’s true.” Linda’s soft interjection stopped their bickering.

Heartbeat skipping, his hand shooting out to silence Cassidy, Jesse leaned forward. “You saw him? Here? In New Orleans?”

“I have. Not too far from where we’re sitting right now.”

“Tell me.”

Linda’s expression went grave. “Gentlemen, do you believe it’s possible for the Devil to leave his kingdom and walk the earth as a man?”

Cassidy snorted. “I’m at the point o’ just about believin’ anyt’ing.”

Jesse tapped him on the chest with the flat of his hand. “Could be.”

“I _know_ he has,” Linda whispered, her eyes gone wide. “Know it for a fact. People said he was in London long ago. The called him ‘Jack the Ripper’ then, and he was never caught. Well, the Devil came to New Orleans, too. They called him the Axeman.”

It struck an off chord with Jesse, and he could tell from Cassidy’s silence that it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, either. “And you saw him?”

Crossing her arms, pride plain on her face, Linda said, “My Great-Grandmama was his only surviving victim.”

“Your...grandmother.”

“ _Great_ -Grandmama. The Axeman came for her on this very spot. She never knew why or how he chose her. He didn’t care that she was about to have her baby. He went into the bedroom—” she turned and pointed back toward the hallway “—and bashed her pretty good with the back end of her own wood axe. She’d have died if Great-Granddaddy hadn’t come home.”

Jesse fought the urge to sigh. He didn’t want to look over to see Cassidy’s face. “And this was when?”

“Nineteen-eighteen. My Grandmama was born two days after.”

Suddenly pissed off, Jesse scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You said _you_ saw him. Either you look _real_ good for a hundred and change, or something’s a little off.”

Wide-eyed, Cassidy shot off a whispered warning: “ _Jesse_.”

“I’m—” Jesse clenched a fist “—just trying to understand here.”

The set of Linda’s mouth was hard. “Reverend Jesse, I appreciate your skepticism. It sounds like a wild story to just about anyone. But the Axeman of New Orleans has kept on killing long after his last official victim. He comes back for a grand tour of his killing grounds on the same day every year.”

“Yeah?” Jesse asked. “And what day is that?”

“March nineteenth,” Linda said, falling short of ominous.

Jesse felt Cassidy twitch beside him. When he looked over, he was yanking his phone from his pocket.

“Shite!” Cassidy shouted, causing Linda to flinch. “So all we need ta do is come back ta this house in a couple nights and we’ll see ‘im? That’s great!”

Jesse fended off an elbow to the ribs.

All at once, Linda broke eye contact. She scanned the far wall and its fake fireplace—so far the scariest thing in the Old Wisteria Guest House by a long shot. “Oh, well, _no_ ,” she said. “He hasn’t been back here since the house burned down in the eighties.”

“Ye what?” Cassidy asked. “This isn’t the real place?”

“The house you’re sitting in now is an exact replica.” She smiled primly. “Except now I can rent out the master suite.”

Jesse chewed the inside of his cheek. Linda’s smug face looked smackable, but he was _not_ for hitting women. Unless they liked it. Or unless they were murderous angels. Or unless... _shit_.

“Right, then.” He stood up, brushing off the seat of his pants as though he’d been sitting in dirt. Not that he cared to look over, but he suspected Cassidy wouldn’t be able to meet his eyes. To Linda, he said, “We’ve taken up enough of your time.” He strode right past her out of the room and into the hallway, his vision rimmed in violent red.

Linda rushed up to him, snagging his sleeve, losing one bunny slipper in the process. “Remember the nineteenth,” she said. “You can’t shut the Devil out.”

Jesse shrugged her off and kept at it.

“Ah, thanks fer yer hospitality,” Cassidy said, rushing to keep up.

When they were only just out on the porch, boards squealing under boot heels, Linda shouted, “Wait!”

Jesse wheeled to face her, a storm crackling within him.

“Reverend, please. Will you pray with me before you go?”

He narrowed his eyes then looked upward at the vine-covered trellis, pressing his palms together. “Lord—wherever the hell You are—please bless Linda and one-eyed Ronnie and their exact-replica house, which most certainly does _not_ attract the forces of darkness. Provided You can find time in Your busy schedule.” He looked down at Linda again, ignoring her confusion. Satisfied, he let Genesis well up from his gut and spill out over his tongue. “ **SLEEP**.”

Linda’s eyes went huge for a second, then they rolled right back in her head. She dropped to the floor in the entry hall, snoring lightly.

Jesse walked off the porch steps and down the stone path. The night was cool and smelled of river mud. He slid his phone from his back pocket.

“D’ye think _maybe_ that was a little harsh?” asked Cassidy, suddenly beside him. “I dunno; seems ta me she was tryin’ her best. Sure, it was a dead end, but pullin’ Genesis out an’ whatnot...a tad over-the-top, if y’ ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you. Now you can either keep quiet or you can walk home.”

A moment of hurt silence.

Jesse was starting to feel the first prickles of regret—not something he felt he could afford at the moment. Not with so much to do. The phone beeped. The car was a minute away.

“Where d’we go now, then?” Cassidy asked.

“Next club.”

“Take a break, Jess. Have a drink. Jus’ one. It’ll be like ol’ times back in the church.”

“Church is gone, Cassidy. Those times are gone. We were dumb and innocent and didn’t know nothing. But we ate the apple. There ain’t no going back. Somebody I know once told me, ‘You either get back on the horse or you die in the dust.’”

“Sounds like a real charmer,” Cassidy said with a sniff.

“He was a sadistic piece of shit. But he got things done.”

The ride, a white Hyundai, slowed as it came down the street, flashing the headlights once. The driver lowered the passenger-side window and shouted over a radio sportscast. “You Jesse?”

Jesse nodded. He opened the rear door. To Cassidy: “You coming?”

“Ye know, I don’t think I am. Night’s all right and I could use a walk.”

“Fine by me,” Jesse told him. He folded himself into the seat, shutting the door after him. Weak air from the car’s vents wafted the vanilla odor from one of those tree-shaped air fresheners hanging behind the rear view. If Cassidy said anything else, Jesse didn’t hear.

 

*

 

He heard his name. At first, Jesse turned toward the source of the soft breath he felt on his cheek. _Tulip_ … He reared back after opening his eyes and seeing Cassidy’s eager, unshaven face in close-up. “The _fuck_?”

“Oh, hey there, Padre. Weren’t sure ye were breathin’.”

Jesse shot him a skeptical look. Just raising his head, he could tell that his hair was splayed in clumps every which way. His face felt puffy. He dug a knuckle into the corner of his eye, only to wince at the sharp sting of overnight grit.

“Where’s Tulip?” Cassidy asked. The sleeves of his grimy t-shirt had been cut off above the seam. A blank-eyed Patrick Nagel girl was silk-screened on the front.

By instinct, Jesse reached over to the other side of the bed but patted only cool sheets. Despite not having had a single drink the night before, he couldn’t remember whether Tulip had been in the bed when he’d come back. “She’s…out, I guess.”

“Early riser.”

Examining the watery quality of the light that had just begun to seep through the gaps between dust-covered blinds, Jesse said, “You, too.”

“Oh, I didn’t sleep. Found a fascinatin’ bloke at a little place off Jackson Square. Doin’ a degree in Victorian culture. Had ta set ‘im straight about a thing or twelve. Were comparin’ tats as well. Says he’s got one o’ Nikola Tesla on his right arse cheek, but I figured it might come off a little awkward if I asked fer proof.”

Jesse groaned and laid his heavy head back down. The pillow was nearly flat but just being horizontal felt good. “Sounds like a _fantastic_ night.”

“Any God sightin’s?”

“What does it look like?”

Cassidy paused. “I jus’ want ye ta know it wasn’t all makin’ merry las’ night.” Another pause. “I know ye prob’ly don’t wanna hear this, but I did a little more lookin’ inta this Axeman fella, and—”

“You’re right,” Jesse said.

“I’m _right_?”

Turning to face the window as ancient bedsprings complained, Jesse said, “Yeah. I _don’t_ wanna hear it.”

“Well,” Cassidy said, a clipped syllable, “anyway, one o’ the original buildings where he whacked somebody is still around. Last one in the city. There was a couple houses got wiped out in Katrina; I guess that’s no surprise.”

Jesse pressed his face into the spot on the bed where Tulip should have been, trying to drown it all out.

“An’ the part about nineteenth March is right, as well, though our friend Linda didn’t tell us _why_. An’ that’s where it gets interestin’.”

“Cassidy!” Jesse shouted with as much volume as he could muster with his face pushed into the covers. “What did I just say?”

A long exhale from beside the bed. “Fine. Lemme get ta the part about the letter, then I’ll let ye be.”

Jesse hauled in a deep breath, but stopped on the verge of speaking because damned if Genesis wasn’t _right there_. At first, when it had chosen him, it felt like an add-on. An extra skeleton in his skin, pushing at his corners, making him larger. Like...getting one of those damn magic mushrooms in _Super Mario_. In the early days he had to fumble for the physicality of it, to reach for its power and concentrate it. Use it like an energy stream to blast away the obstacles of other people’s intentions. But the odd angles had ground down inside, the dust of its once-awkward shape melting into his muscles and blood. Genesis swung now with the ease of his stride. It rode his breath. He and it were the same. And while others’ desires and actions still countered his own, they weren’t so much walls in his path as billboards along the highway. Jesse could see them, wave, and pass right on through.

At the same time, he guessed there had to be places in his mind—some of the deeper parts—where the angels’ warning not to over-use its power had stuck. Where the particles hadn’t leached in yet. Maybe it was one of those keeping him from banishing Cassidy.

Of course it wasn’t nearly so simple and Jesse also knew _that_. He guessed with Tulip it was pretty easy to puzzle out why the idea of using Genesis on her left a bad taste in his mouth. Her loyalty, her affection. A whole lot of scars from the same things in the same places. If she left him, he could force her to stay. He could even force her mind not to resent him for it. But that would be cutting her open and yanking out all the stuff that made her Tulip. Whatever was left would have her face, and nothing else.

_But Cassidy?_

Memories of getting shitfaced in the vestibule, laughing like fools—they were just sparks on water. Here, then over there, then gone completely if you tried to get your hands around them. That’s what pre-Genesis Jesse would have called a friendship. Now black and eaten away like Cassidy’s skin on fire in the sunlight.

When they came back around to each other, both were different men. Sometimes Cassidy was so infuriating that Jesse was sure he could annoy a corpse back to life just so it could shamble away in relief. And yet, there hadn’t been a question of him coming along on the Great Deity Hunt. Cassidy came along because the idea of him _not_ coming along hadn’t been considered.

Jesse breathed out, rolled over to his back, then pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Okay, what about the letter?”

“It’s all Zodiac Killer an’ shite,” Cassidy babbled, his tone bright again. “Bloke sends a letter ta the coppers, nobody knowin’ who he is. Return address says ‘Hell’...an’ nothin’ else.”

Letting his hands fall away and the strengthening sunlight to find his eyes, Jesse sat up. “Letter from Hell. Like Jack the Ripper.”

Cassidy was all giddy energy. “Exactly! An’ what Linda said las’ night.”

“What’d the letter say?”

“Lot of it was the ol’ ‘ye bastards’ll never catch me’ thing that serial killers like ta do.” Cassidy waved a hand in the air. “Braggin’ an’ whatnot. But at the end he said that on the night of nineteen March, he was comin’ ta the city again. How _ever_ —an’ I’m not makin’ this up—he says any house in New Orleans was playin’ _jazz_ would be safe, an’ nobody’d get the chop.”

Shaking his head slowly, Jesse said, “I’ll be damned.”

“I know,” Cassidy said with wide eyes. “The Devil likes jazz music, too.”

“What’s today?” Jesse asked. “The eighteenth?”

Cassidy nodded.

“Gives us a little time.”

“Fer what?”

“To find this building,” Jesse said. “And lay a trap.”

“Right, great idea.” From his jeans pocket, Cassidy pulled the little folded map that Ronnie the bartender had given them last night. He shook out the crinkles and spread it over the rumpled bed. “Talkin’ with my new friend las’ night, I happened ta bring up the Axeman thing in a roundabout way. _He_ tells me that right over by his university there’s a whole Axeman o’ New Orleans museum! Roundabout the spot somebody got axed. I figure that’s as good a place as any ta start.”

Nodding, all the residue of sleep gone from his head, Jesse said, “I’ll get dressed. Get your umbrella.” By the time he had wrestled the cord free from its twist and opened the blinds to the yellow-tinged morning, Cassidy had fled the room.

 

*

 

It was cool but cloudless out in the new day. At least Cassidy wouldn’t look weird wearing his sweatshirt with its hood pulled up, though the gloves were a little out of place. Jesse had once asked him why he’d chosen the American South of all places.

“As ye’ll recall,” Cassidy had said, “I didn’t _pick_ where I ended up. It was sorta picked fer me.”

Jesse had pressed on: “Why not someplace like Greenland? Norway, or something.”

At that, Cassidy had scoffed. “Everyone tastes like fish. Bit like Japan, really. Except they’re all taller an’ listen ta death metal.”

“I could see you liking death metal.”

“Nah,” Cassidy had said, lip curling up. “That was my Bee Gees phase, anyhow.”

Jesse had shaken his head. The damnedest things came out of his mouth. “Yeah, well, where was the plane headed in the first place?”

A grin. “Tijuana.”

They ambled along the shady side of the street, Jesse’s styrofoam cup full of bitter, chicory-laced coffee. Most of the Big Easy was refreshingly dull on a Saturday morning. The sidewalks between high rises and the sports arena empty but for the occasional homeless person with a shopping cart. They turned their dirty faces up to the sunlight and ignored passers-by. In the Garden District, people swept empty second-floor porches, sending puffs of potted-plant dirt raining down. In a month or so, curtains of petunias and bleeding hearts would be swaying over the wrought iron. The hanging baskets Jesse remembered from childhood were always teeming with fat bumblebees.

“Where d’ye suppose Tulip’s got off to?” Cassidy asked.

“No idea,” Jesse said, tamping down worry. “Nobody controls Tulip but Tulip.”

“She’ll come back,” Cassidy affirmed, though it was shaky.

A few scattered puffs of cloud had appeared over the tops of buildings as they approached the university, but it was nothing that could offer a break from the sunlight. According to the map, their target was close. Rounding a corner, it was easy to pick out: a modest single-story place with a narrow stoop and an equally narrow front door. On either side were taller buildings—apartments, it looked like, from the banks of ugly metal mailboxes out front. Probably full of students. Some of the windows were open, the air conditioning units dragged inside for the brief winter.

A metal marker at the museum said it was a Designated Historical Site for the State of Louisiana. Dead sunflowers sagged over the fence. The sign over the door was printed in block letters, and there was a refreshing lack of spooky music, plastic skeletons, or fake axes. A clean window showed white interior walls, and the eaves were long enough to cast enough shade so the umbrella could be put away.

Jesse opened the front door. A bell on a string jingled. Inside, the museum smelled like old wood; the floor was knotty and worn dull by more than a century’s worth of shoes. Tiny speakers in the corners were dropping a Big Band tune.

With a sigh, Cassidy folded the umbrella and propped it up near the door. In front of them was a podium, and to the right an entryway framed by black velvet curtains and topped by a sign reading “Gift Shop.”

_Of course_.

Out of that doorway came a man in black pants and a burgundy polo shirt. He had one of those faces you’d assume belonged to a younger guy until a smile brought up the crinkles around his eyes and mouth. His nametag read _Brad_.

“Hey, guys,” said Brad. “First visitors of the day. Welcome to the Axeman of New Orleans Museum.”

“Yeah, excited ta be here,” Cassidy said with total honesty.

“Oh!” Brad said. Excitement made him pop onto his toes and made Jesse stifle a laugh. “We love our international visitors. Behind you to your left there’s a big map. If you want, you can put a pushpin where you come from before you leave. Had a guy all the way from Mumbai once.”

Jesse guessed that was a big story. On the paper map, there was a lone colored dot across the entire pink expanse of India.

“Where are you from?” Brad asked Jesse.

“Texas.”

“Texas is good, too.”

There were many more pushpins for the Lone Star State.

“I bought the house about seven years ago,” Brad said, “and opened the museum six years ago.”

They all shook hands; Brad’s fingers were short, his palm dry.

“Just to let you know,” he continued, “this is a self-guided tour and we don’t offer audio tours. But if you’ve got anybody with vision problems in your party there’s an app that will read the exhibit captions for you. It can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour to go through the house. Just take your time. A little background on the building: since a lot of people ask, this _is_ actually the site of one of the Axeman’s murders. One of the earlier ones. Unfortunately, it’s also the last Axeman murder site in the city to survive to this day. We lost a couple in the Lower Ninth when Katrina and Rita hit. Really a tragedy, but it made me want to buy and preserve this place.”

Cassidy nudged Jesse with his elbow. “See? Told ye.”

“An aficionado, huh?” Brad said, doing that little toe-hop again. “Well, I guess you already know you’re here on a pretty special day.”

“Thought it was tomorrow,” Jesse said.

Brad was beaming. “Wow, you guys could almost do tours here. If you look at the letter, the Axeman said he was coming at quarter after midnight. So, it was _technically_ when it had just flipped over from the eighteenth to the nineteenth.”

“Shit,” said Jesse. He slapped on a smile. “I mean great.”

Brad curled his stubby fingers over the edge of the podium. “You guys wanna hear a little secret?”

“Sure thing,” Cassidy said.

Brad leaned in. He had a raised mole just above his collar. At least it wasn’t hairy. “Every other night, when I shut things down, I turn off the sound system. With one exception: I leave the jazz playing on the night of the eighteenth, straight through until morning. I’m not a superstitious guy for the most part, but people say the Axeman still comes back, looking for souls to keep him company in the underworld.”

In the thick pause that followed, Jesse almost expected a flicker of lights, a peal of thunder. Instead, a mockingbird croaked outside the window.

Brad thumped the podium with his hand and laughed. “Well, then. I’ll let you get on with it. We’ve got free samples of sweet tea in the gift shop. Special blend; my husband makes it.”

“Sounds great, Brad,” said Cassidy, now looking past the burgundy-clad shoulder.

Jesse tore his gaze away from the mole and nodded, too.

A few pictures hung on the white walls of the foyer: a snapshot of the exterior of the house printed in a 1919 edition of the _Times-Picayune_ , a cartoon of an axe-wielding bogeyman from the same paper, a blurry shot of what looked like a figure carrying an axe into a tenement doorway.

“There’s our man,” Cassidy said.

“Or it’s Bigfoot,” said Jesse.

“I think I saw Bigfoot once.”

Pausing near a doorway at the far end of the room, Jesse arched an eyebrow.

Cassidy followed as they moved to the next room, a living area with a (thankfully functional) fireplace but the same clean, white walls. It mostly held photos, though there was a metal bench set in front of a painting. A piss-poor Cubist imitation in blue and red done by someone named Miller in nineteen-ninety-one.

“So, yeah, Bigfoot,” Cassidy started. “California. Mighta been...seventy-one.”

_Before Jesse was even born._

“Meet a band o’  hippie bastards in the Redwoods. Good folks, all in all. Not too bright, though. Had one of ‘em dug up some mushrooms fer tea; we were all jus’ plannin’ on gettin’ high as fuck an’ watchin’ the Milky Way. Turns out was exactly the wrong kind o’ mushroom. I’ve got people goin’ down left an’ right around me. There’s twitchin’ an’ foamin’ at the mouth an’ all. Saved a bloke from pitchin’ over right into the campfire. In the end, I had ta sneak outta there, try ta get some help. No cell phones, ye know. All the while, I’m trippin’ absolute balls, right? So, probably wasn’t the real Bigfoot I saw. Never managed ta make it outta the woods before morning and had ta hole up under a rock.”

“What happened to the hippies?” Jesse asked.

“No idea,” Cassidy said, wandering toward the pillar display in the middle of the room. “Hitched out ta Sacramento the next night.”

Cassidy’s nonchalance was eerie. Until it wasn’t. Surprising himself, Jesse burst into laughter. It was drawn-out, too. Nothing held back. Cassidy joined in and soon enough Jesse was clutching his burning gut and wiping away tears. It felt... _damn_ , it felt good.

A soft _whoa_ cut through the mirth. Cassidy beckoned him over.

Atop the display, pinned to a velvet background and encased in glass, was a sheet of yellowed paper. The print was neat, even elegant. In the top left corner was scrawled:

 

_Hell, March 13, 1919_

 

Jesse thumbed the last of the moisture from his eyes and looked again. “Is that…?”

“Gotta be,” Cassidy said. “The Axeman’s letter.”

Hearing it read in Cassidy’s lilting accent was both strange and fitting. The author, whether it was the Axeman or some nineteen-tens crime buff looking for kicks, at least could put a sentence together. The crazy showed in the claims, not the writing.

Jesse frowned. “Seems to be saying he’s more of a demon than he is the actual Devil.”

“Yeah, since when does Satan brag about _not_ killin’ people?” Cassidy asked.

Jesse ran a finger over the edge of the glass case. “Could be a demon, then.”

“D’ye believe in’ em?”

“Comes with the package.” Jesse scratched his chin. “God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell. Angels and demons. The gospels all describe seeing Jesus drive demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs. Outside that, they don’t get talked about much in the Good Book, to be honest.”

“Ye’d know better than I would,” said Cassidy. “Shoulda paid attention in scripture readin’s. Might be a little more help now...an’ I wouldn’a got the shite beat outta me by my da back in the day.”

Something cool and firm clenched around Jesse’s chest, making it hard to draw a breath. He knew more than a little about sadistic indoctrination: the smell of the Box—wet rot and sweat giving way to piss and shit. Darkness thick as snot and unanswered prayers for sleep so he didn’t edge that next inch closer to crazy.

Jesse cleared his throat. He’d preached it before, but really he was never one to cotton on to the idea of fate. People who hit rock bottom and start digging like to say that God has a plan. Maybe it was true at one point, but it certainly wasn’t now. Not unless He left instructions. With desperate angels hiring two-bit actors as cover, Jesse doubted Heaven could handle itself well enough to put together an IKEA bookshelf.

Still, there was a whiff of grand design around him and Cassidy right then. As kids, they both came up dirt poor. Hardly a coincidence. Meeting when they did in the age of international travel: not too weird, either. You threw in the literal _century_ between them, on top of the fact that Cassidy literally fell out of thin air into Jesse’s backyard, and “coincidence” became a dicier word.  

“Ye all right there, Padre?” Cassidy cut in. “Yer lookin’ a bit green.”

“Thinking, is all.”

They ambled out of the room with the letter in it, a little weight coming off of Jesse as he passed the threshold. An arrow pointed them to the space across the hall. Portraits hung in simple frames. It turned out they were pictures of possible suspects. A somber-looking black man, the portrait next to him a forgettable white man in a hat. A repeat of the blurry “Bigfoot” photo. The caption on one blank frame said that a victim had falsely accused the person who came to her rescue after he heard her screaming.

The next room was a bedroom and the only one not painted white. It was wallpapered and furnished, Jesse guessed to look authentic.

“Exact replica,” Cassidy whispered.

Jesse coughed to cover a laugh.

They stood behind a velvet rope, reading the plaque by the door. The victim, a woman, had been attacked in her bed. Found the next day with her own bloody wood chopping axe by the bed, she actually recovered, but with no memory of what happened.

In the wall above the narrow bed was an old-fashioned single-pane window. The curtains were sewn from flour sacks. Above it, Jesse caught sight of the only modern-looking thing in the setup. A small white dot and a wire threaded around the frame. He pointed for Cassidy’s benefit. “Look. Alarm on the window.”

“Well, our friend Brad does seem like one ta cross the i’s and dot the... _oh_.” Cassidy had caught on. He hissed into Jesse’s ear. “So we’re really doin’ this?”

“Worst that could happen is nothing,” said Jesse. “Which is exactly what I’ve gotten out of casing jazz clubs so far. If God can shake it up, so can we.”

Cassidy grinned. “Don’t think ye’ll regret it. Got a feelin’ about this place.”

Beside the bedroom was a door with a handicapped access sign. Jesse opened it to find a modern bathroom with safety rails and one of those awful super-fast electric hand dryers that sounded like a jet engine.

There were more voices coming from the direction of the front foyer now. Jesse and Cassidy wandered into the last room, where the light was a bit lower. A row of unlit candles in glass cups was lined up on a metal stand. It was flanked by a donation box and a bowl full of matches. On the wall above the stand was a plaque engraved with names.

Jesse shook his head. That was one way to pander to the state’s sentimental Catholics. He guessed Brad didn’t want to get too somber. Near the other end of the room, an arrow shaped sign on the wall read “This Way to the Gift Shop!” Jesse looked over the plaque once more, then turned away, catching in the corner of his eye Cassidy taking an unlit match and slipping it into his jacket pocket.

Track lighting and piles of t-shirts greeted them through the velvet curtains. Behind a glass counter was a door marked _Employees Only_.

Brad was at the far corner of the shop, rearranging a small display of New Orleans-themed trinkets in green, yellow, and purple. “You guys enjoy yourselves?” he asked. “Learn anything you didn’t know before?”

“Oh, tons,” said Cassidy.

Brad had kind of a dreamy look. “The story—I don’t know. It just gets under your skin. I feel like I’m always learning more.”

“An’ yer hubby, he doesn’t mind ye bein’ so devoted t’an axe murderer?” Cassidy asked.

Brad laughed. “He’s learned to deal with it.”

Jesse scanned the walls. A couple of headless, sexless mannequins sported printed t-shirts. On one shirt was a picture of the museum—the subdued option. Another shirt looked like it was covered with axe wounds leaking cartoonish blood. Axe-shaped pencils were propped in a plastic tub. There were magnets, reproduction map posters, postcards. He pondered the idea of an axe-shaped silver charm for Tulip, if she wasn’t just going to look at him like he’d grown an extra head. A glass case on the wall held a full-sized usable axe with a rubber guard over the edge of the blade. On the glossy handle was printed in red letters: **I Survived!**

A cool paper cup of something was being pressed into Jesse’s hand. He nearly sloshed the iced tea onto the floor in surprise. The drink was perfectly Southern: syrupy-sweet and tasting like things he’d rather not remember.

“What’ve you got planned for the rest of the day?” Brad asked.

“Preparin’ for tonight,” Cassidy said.

Jesse choked on his tea.

“Well,” Cassidy continued with a wink, “figure we’d better be in a jazz club aroun’ midnight if we wanna keep our heads.”

“Right,” Jesse managed.

An easy laugh from Brad. “Of course! Is there anything you want to see in here before you head out?”

Cassidy’s teeth gleamed in the artificial light. He pointed toward the case on the wall. “Lemme have a look a’ _that._ ”

 

*

 

As the sun was dipping below the skyline, Tulip had yet to return to Denis’s place.

Cassidy had yet to put down the axe.

He had tried to show it off to their host twice, met once with a withering look and the second time with a spit-flecked tirade in French. Cassidy had slunk off with something that looked a little like guilt on his face.

Preoccupied with the plan, Jesse didn’t chase it. He sure as hell wasn’t dishing on Angelville or the L’Angelle clan; he wouldn’t push Cassidy on whatever bad blood was between him and Denis.

It turned out New Orleans was chipping away at all three of them with different tools. Only Tulip had been up-front about it, really. Leave it to Jesse himself to deny the longest. It pissed him off, too, but only in the way men are taught to be angry because shame isn’t manly.

He was holding on to something good coming out of tonight just as hard as Cassidy was hanging on to his lethal new toy.

With some research, he’d turned up that the museum shared a pretty common floor plan with many New Orleans houses in the ‘tens. God (or someone) bless the internet and wifi. Looking at the blueprints on his phone and walking the museum spaces in his mind, Jesse figured the foyer, gift shop, and office had at one time been a single corner room. Window at the front, none in the shop; that meant the office had to have a window.

The office was the most likely spot for an alarm hub, too. Tulip had picked up a thing or two about disarming burglar systems way back when. Hobby projects for felons. Jesse might have to settle for ripping the unit out of the wall.

Cassidy had asked about a root cellar or storm cellar entrance, but only idiots dug open spaces into Louisiana soil—and got flooded out within a few months for their trouble. It had taken until bone-dry West Texas to convince Jesse that basements were a thing.

They were set to move out at ten-thirty.

When the hour rolled around, there was still no sign of Tulip, and Jesse couldn’t convince Cassidy to leave the axe. “I think it’s our best bet,” he said, clutching the thing to his chest. “Fight fire with fire.”

“ _Genesis_ is our best bet. Plus, you can’t die, right?”

Cassidy scowled. “He’s not got a Saturday Night Special, Jesse. It’s an _axe_. Dunno how fast or how strong this thing is, but if it takes my head off, say, there’s no comin’ back from that.”

While Cassidy dug for something to carry the axe in, Jesse wrote a note for Tulip with a dull golf pencil and paper from a notepad on the fridge. The sheet had cartoon rodents on it—smiling mice or hamsters. He told her not to worry, scribbled those words out, then wrote “Back soon. Don’t text me I’ll text you.”

Turned out Cassidy’s axe fit pretty swell in a musty tennis racket bag. Where it had come from was anyone’s guess. It was hard to picture Denis on the hard court in his whites.

Downstairs, the Saturday night echoes from Bourbon Street laid down a carpet of noise. Jesse called for a car, which turned out to be a Prius driven by a guy with a waxed mustache who would have run screaming for Al Gore if he got one look at Tulip’s gas guzzler.

“A little midnight tennis, guys?” he asked.

“Gonna be the next Serena,” Cassidy said. “Talent never sleeps.”

“You his doubles partner?” the guy asked Jesse.

Jesse glowered. “Spiritual support.”

When they got out down the road from the museum, Jesse turned back and leaned into the passenger side window. Genesis boomed out, rocking the pint-sized car a little. “ **FORGET ABOUT US**.”

When the Prius was out of sight, Jesse nodded.  

At the side of the museum building, the view to the office was blocked by mini-blinds closed tight. Jesse pressed the side of his face against the dark glass, picking up the faint sound of a horn section in gleeful concert.

A first-floor window next door was high enough to see over the hedge between buildings, but the light was off and curtains were drawn.

Cassidy did a little struggling with the rusted zip, but then the axe was free, its keen edge a sliver of moonlight. At Jesse’s nod, he knocked in the bottom pane with the dull side of the axehead.

A little thrill of adrenaline came along with the sound of breaking glass. At the same time, Jesse wanted to laugh. B-and-E was kiddie shit, like toilet papering the neighbor’s house. Grand theft, larceny, fraud—the things Tulip pulled him into—that was real-stakes stuff. She’d popped his cherry on just about every kind of caper. And literally, too, out back of a convenience store in about two whole minutes of mosquito-bitten bliss. Afterward, Jesse remembered she’d got one of the bloodsucking bastards on her arm. Tensed up that teenage bicep and watched the bug’s abdomen fill like a helium balloon. Laughing, she’d slapped it into a gory smear on her brown skin...and Jesse fell in love.

He was yanked back into the present by Cassidy practically diving onto him. They thumped to the ground next to the hedge in a graceless pile.

“Shh,” Cassidy said. “Somethin’s movin’ in th’ other window.”

Jesse shoved him off and moved part of the foliage aside. The apartment’s curtain was twitching. After a second, the short snout of a cat pushed it aside. They caught a flash of dime-bright eyes, then it was gone.

Cassidy stood up and reached inside to unlatch the window. So far, no howling alarm, but it could have been the silent kind.

Jesse followed him through the window, first handing the axe along. Inside, the museum office was painfully small, with a corner desk and a mini fridge. An iMac sat on the desktop. Jesse pulled out his phone, using the screen’s glow to see. He didn’t have Cassidy’s night vision. The calendar on the wall was the kind you get at service stations, and a framed photo showed a slightly younger Brad holding hands with a pleasant-looking guy who was just starting to go bald. They wore matched tuxedos.

“If he sets an alarm, he doesn’t do it here,” Cassidy whispered.

“No, but look,” Jesse said. On top of the fridge was a satellite radio receiver. The scrolling front display read _Early Jazz Favorites 154_. Jesse fumbled behind the receiver and popped the power cord free. The display went dead and the quiet brass section stopped wailing.

“Time?” Cassidy asked.

“Eleven fifty-three.” Jesse wedged the computer against the window to prevent the blinds from chattering in the slight breeze.

They walked out into the darkened gift shop. If Brad kept a replacement for the axe he’d sold Cassidy, he hadn’t put it up yet. Jesse’s senses were well enough trained that he didn’t mistake the mannequins for actual people, instead looking for danger in the spaces between them. A peek out of the curtains on the other end of the shop showed him something that set his hackles up, though. “Cassidy, check this out.” He pointed as Cassidy joined him. “There’s where the alarm’s set.”

There was a number keypad by the front entrance. It wasn’t lit up, even with a power indicator.

Cassidy understood. “He didn’t set it.”

“Right,” Jesse said. “It’s not just disarmed. It’s _off_.”

“Don’t like that much.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, ye’ve got yer Genesis an’ I’ve got Kenny here.”

Jesse goggled. “You named it _Kenny_?”

“ _Coinneach_. Good Irish name. Saint’s name, as well. Fer good measure.” He smiled and shrugged. “Didn’t say I _never_ paid attention in church.”

“They tell you anything about demons?” Jesse asked.

“Only that I was one, Padre.” Cassidy gave a weak half-smile.

With a time check (eleven fifty-nine), the two of them slid out from behind the curtain and into the shadowy foyer area.

Casting a look toward the empty street visible through the front window, Cassidy asked, “D’ye suppose we should wait here?”

Jesse shook his head. “Too many points of entry. We can’t watch all the corners. I figure we find a room to hole up in.”

Cassidy adjusted his grip on the axe handle. “That’s supposin’ he’s solid an’ has ta use the door. Fer all we know he could come outta thin air.”

It was definitely a consideration. “Okay. I vote we check the rooms first,” Jesse said. “Then find a spot we can defend.”

“Right. Like the Alamo.”

“Cassidy, everyone at the Alamo died.”

An incredulous look. Then: “Who knew?”

The first two rooms looked strange and flat with the lights over the prints shut off. Brad had moved the velvet rope off to one side of the tiny bedroom, but Jesse still felt wrong walking in. Like sneaking up and touching a painting in a gallery. The view on the other side of the alarmed window was dead black. Cassidy bent and pressed down on the bed, leaving a dent in the quilt spread over it.

The light in the bathroom was motion-activated; Jesse slapped the wall-mounted button, plunging the room into darkness again.

“Whatta you say we stick it out here?” he asked Cassidy when they got into the memorial room, looking toward the doorway to the gift shop.

“Fine by me. What time’ve ya got?”

Jesse checked his phone. Seven after midnight. He and Cassidy backed up to the wall across from the votive stand. The still air was full of the sound of Jesse’s breathing.

Cassidy, being dead and all, only had to use his lungs when he cared to.

In Jesse’s back pocket, the phone gave a quick buzz. His toes curled inside his boots. “That’s it,” he said. _Twelve-fifteen_. Genesis was singing in his veins.

But after a minute, then two...still no sounds, no pressure changes. No infernal fissures opening in the floor or Terminator-style balls of lightning. A droplet of sweat made its tickling way down from Jesse’s hairline to his jaw.

When Cassidy swore softly, Jesse let his shoulders relax. Relief became disappointment pretty fast. The whole Big Easy was a washout. Might as well pack the car and move on.

Cassidy had lowered the axe, but it bounced back up with comical speed when they heard the hinge creak. Jesse heard no footsteps, but two distinct sounds reached his ears: the closing front door and then the hollow thump of a deadbolt.

“Hello!” The shout was loud enough, even from the other room, to make Jesse and Cassidy wince in tandem. “I know you’re in here!”

_Brad?_ Cassidy mouthed silently.

Jesse couldn’t even nod. It was _im-fucking-possible_ , but somehow mild-mannered Brad had them figured out. Why else would the alarm be left off? Bizarre scenarios flew through his head: _Linda had tipped him off. There was some sort of underground network of Axeman fanatics._ He forced himself to clear his mind. He still had Genesis—dominion over good and evil alike.

_Hopefully._

“Preacher-man!” Brad called out. “You’ve got no place to hide.”

Jesse almost leapt out of his skin when all of the candles on the stand roared to violent life, blackening the paint on the wall behind them.

“Oh, fuck me,” Cassidy said as a thick stench filled the room.

_Sulfur_.

“ _Therefore submit to God_ ,” Jesse whispered on instinct. “ _Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. This I say in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ._ ”

Cassidy stumbled forward, his arms outstretched. Something unseen was dragging the axe away, and Cassidy with it.

“Let it go!” Jesse shouted.

“Ta hell wit’ that!”

The invisible force tugged again, pulling Cassidy to his knees with a crack on the warped floor.

“ **LET IT GO**.”

Cassidy’s grip went limp. The weapon tumbled end-over-end and lodged in the sheetrock, where it began to rattle.

“ _Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you!_ ” Jesse yelled. “ _This I say in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!_ ”

At that, the candles fizzled out. Kenny slipped free of the wall and flew, swinging in a lethal arc. Jesse ducked, but he could feel it brush by. A split second later, pieces of his own hair, hacked off by the blade, drifted down like dust in front of his eyes. “Son of a bitch!”

Laughter from the front room. It was still Brad’s voice, but sounded like he’d snorted a few lines before coming in.

Jesse stood up. The axe was gone, and he was good and angry now. Righteously so. He pushed past the sliced-up curtain at the gift shop door. What he saw standing in the foyer made him do a double take. Holding the axe in his hands was, indeed, the museum owner. He had sleep-mussed hair and was barefoot, wearing a blue bathrobe. But his eyes had the same red-gold sheen as the cat in the neighbor’s window and his smile was all out-of-proportion with the rest of his face. Strangely, he was looking down the dark hallway instead of at Jesse.

“ **PUT DOWN THE AXE** ,” Jesse ordered.

The Brad-thing didn’t look over...and it didn’t obey.

Jesse took a step forward. “ **PUT IT DOWN**.”

Brad seemed to see him at last, swiveling his head first and moving the rest of his body afterward. “Well, well. Jesse Custer.” He was speaking so forcefully that tendons stood out in his neck. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“ **TELL ME YOUR NAME**.”

Again, to his frustration, Brad said nothing and did nothing, just stared with that creepy grin.

When Jesse saw movement from the hallway, he tried not to look, but his gaze flicked over anyway. He cursed himself for giving Cassidy away.

The Brad-thing turned.

Cassidy had a white slab raised over his head, going in for the kill.

With wicked speed, Brad raised the axe.

What Jesse recognized as the ceramic top of the toilet tank from the bathroom split in half against the blade and crashed to the floor in pieces.

Somehow, Cassidy managed to catch the handle and tried to push it away. He was stronger than the average mortal, but Brad was aided by inhuman strength, too. The now-chipped blade hovered just above Cassidy’s forehead.

“Call ‘im off!” he roared.

Jesse rushed the bathrobe-clad figure, delivering a sharp kick to the back of Brad’s knee. It sent him backward and Cassidy managed to duck out from underneath.

“What the hell?” he asked, wide-eyed and shaken.

Jesse bent and swept Brad up in a chokehold. “Genesis ain’t working!” he shouted past the snarling face.

“Oh, of _course_!”

Brad had flipped the axe in his grip and was swinging it back over his shoulder, trying to catch the attacker in the face. He was more likely to shave off Brad’s ear doing that, but Jesse still moved away.

At that second, Cassidy shot a kick right at the Brad-thing’s gut, sending him staggering back into Jesse again. An enraged swing almost took off Cassidy’s still-outstretched foot. The axe thunked into the old flooring, chucking up splinters.

His arms around Brad’s middle, Jesse spun him and flung him away with as much strength as he could muster.

Cassidy went for the axe he’d left behind, yanking it squealing out of the wood.

Brad had already recovered. He laughed and the sound boomed through the space. “You think you’re a match for me, vampire?” Another laugh at Cassidy’s obvious dismay. “Oh, yes, we know all about _you_ , too.”

When Cassidy raised the axe, Jesse held up a hand. “Don’t hurt him! It won’t stop the demon!’

“Can’t ya fuckin’...exorcise it or somethin’?”

Brad held out his hand to summon the axe, but Jesse hunkered down and tackled him to the gallery floor. When the possessed man’s head knocked wood, a small, bright orange thing bounced a couple of inches away. Jesse grabbed for it, but Brad gave an animal growl and launched Jesse off toward the ceiling. He smacked into it hard, the glass dome of a ceiling light shattering on impact and blowing shards into his skin. Touchdown knocked the air from his lungs. Watching through a field of dancing stars, Jesse saw the axe wrenched from Cassidy’s grip again.

“Didn’t you _read up_?” Brad howled. “The Axeman doesn’t _bring_ an axe! He kills you with _yours_!”

Even taking half a breath burned Jesse’s lungs.

Cassidy ducked under a vicious swing, but when he stood up again, Brad jabbed at him with the handle, connecting right next to his nose. Jesse heard something crack. Dark blood fountained from between Cassidy’s fingers as he clutched his face. The impact spun him around, spraying like a damn lawn sprinkler. It was the fact that he was falling that saved his life, but the edge of the axe still clipped him below his shoulder blade, splitting fabric, skin, and muscle.

Screaming, Jesse scrambled to his feet and leapt onto the Brad-thing’s back. One arm around his throat, he dug into one ear until he felt the give of foam.

Trying to twist his head against the invasion, Brad raised the axe over Cassidy again. Jesse had already loosened the ear plug, though, flicking it out and away.

“ **STOP**.”

Brad went still, the axe high above his head.

Panting his relief, Jesse pulled the thing out of Brad’s frozen grip and dropped it on the ground. Dark red spots peppered the handle and blade. When he looked down, he saw the lower half of Cassidy’s face was a mask of blood, and more oozed out from behind his back like a stunted wing.

Jesse was furious, but not rage-blind enough to break Brad’s neck. “ **GO TO THE WALL**.”

Brad ran to the far wall.

“ **GET ON YOUR KNEES**.” Jesse turned to Cassidy. “You gonna live?”

He got a blood-filled cough and a thumbs-up in return.

“What’s your name?” he asked the demon.

“Legion.”

“Don’t dick me around or I’ll serve you to Heaven on a platter and let the angels tear you apart. You know I can do it.”

“Fine,” it hissed. “Nergal.”

Jesse sniffed. “Never heard of you.”

“That’s because you’re a puny title and a book away from illiterate white trash, Jesse Custer.” Nergal grinned. “We keep tabs on you in Hell.”

“You’ve got as much stake in Genesis as Heaven does,” Jesse said.

“Oh, we go way back before that. Your ledger of sins is thick.”

Trying for assurance, Jesse said, “God is on my side.”

Nergal’s laughter was ugly in Brad’s throat. “The Enslaver is on nobody’s side these days. Or hadn’t you noticed? At least Lord Lucifer still sits while the Throne of Heaven is gathering dust.”

“Where is God?”

“No idea.”

“ **WHERE IS GOD**?”

“I told you I don’t know! Nobody in Hell knows! Don’t get your panties in a twist, preacher-man.”

A low moan from behind Jesse.

“Sure hope your buddy’s okay,” Nergal said, sneering. “Being one of the undead doesn’t mean you forfeit your soul. And bloodsucker souls only go one way.” Brad’s finger pointed toward the floor.

“Shut up,” said Jesse, his voice steely.

“Make me.”

“Oh, I will. Just one more thing I wanna know. Were you the Axeman of New Orleans?”

Another laugh. “Axeman was just a man. Another mortal soul to reap, lost in the billions.” He shrugged. “But I heard from the barracks he’s got a nice singing voice.”

“ **GO TO HELL** ,” said Jesse/Genesis. “ **AND DON’T COME BACK**.”

Something like a scream rose, peaked, then faded. When it was gone, Brad fell forward, breathing hard.

Jesse went over to Cassidy and knelt at his side.

“Tell me he didn’t get me fang,” Cassidy said. The words were a little mushy. His nose was skewed to one side. There was a lot of blood.

All the guilt that adrenaline had erased hit Jesse then, annihilating the afterglow of a good fight. He forced himself closer to examine Cassidy’s mouth. All teeth seemed accounted for, just drippy and pink, and Jesse said so.

There was a little noise of relief.

Putting a sweaty hand through sweaty hair (and remembering the whistling blade of the axe), Jesse swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Think your back might be worse.”

Cassidy raised his head again and strained to look at the growing pool of blood. “Yeah, ye may be right.”

Jesse went to tuck his hand under Cassidy’s uninjured shoulder. “Okay, we’re gonna get you out of here.”

“No,” he said. “Need blood first.” He sounded utterly sure.

“I’ll figure something out,” Jesse said.

His hand shaking, Cassidy pointed across the room. “Wha’bout him?”

“Absolutely not. No. You are not eating Brad.”

Cassidy rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna _eat_ ‘im. All I need’s a coupla pints. He’ll make it.”

Jesse shook his head. “He just had a demon in him. He’s weak as it is. Can Denis help out?”

The look of horror on Cassidy’s busted face must have hurt him. “I’m not _touchin’_ Denis! I swear ta Christ I’ll lay here an’ bleed out before that happens!”

“Hey.” The voice from across the room was shaky and rough.

Jesse turned and Cassidy lifted his head.

“Aren’t you…?” Brad asked.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Jesse told him.

A sob-like noise. “What happened to my museum?”

“That’s, uh—shit.” Jesse cleared his throat. “ **FORGET WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT. GET UP AND WALK OUT. GO HOME**.”

Though unsteady on his feet, Brad heaved himself up and turned toward the front door. His bathrobe looked like a crime scene.

“Take a shower,” Cassidy added.

“ **TAKE A SHOWER** ,” Jesse said. “And, uh... **HAVE A GOOD MARRIAGE**.”

A dreamy smile hit Brad’s face as he walked out, closing the door behind him.

When Jesse looked back down, Cassidy’s grin was wry through the pain. “Ye ol’ sentimental bastard. Ye know, if ye find this lookin’-fer-God thing ever goes south, ye could make a _killin_ ’ as a marriage coach. Zero divorce rate, thanks ta Genesis…”

“Shut _up_ , Cassidy. Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

“Look,” Cassidy said, wincing as he shied away from Jesse, “I’d love ta. Spirit is willin’, but the flesh is weak. Literally.”

Jesse ground his teeth together. There were probably a couple of trash-fattened possums waddling the alleys around here. But Genesis didn’t work on things that couldn’t understand words, and he might end up with nothing but a rabies vaccine for his troubles. The thing inside him that was getting used to having everything it wanted told him he could force Cassidy to stand up and walk. But it would leave them basically in the same boat anyway.

“God _dammit_.” Jesse tried—he really tried—not to take the name in vain most times. But this wasn’t “most times.” He hooked a finger under his clerical collar and yanked it away, then unbuttoned the top three buttons on his black shirt.

Cassidy’s look was uncomprehending.

Sighing, Jesse pulled the fabric away from his neck. “Go on, then.”

“Are ye sure—?”

“Fuck. Just do it before I change my mind.”

With more strength than Jesse might have given him credit for, Cassidy lurched to a sitting position. The blood had seeped under him, leaving a grotesque red shadow. He leaned in, his chest almost touching Jesse’s.

There was a sliver of white shoulder blade sliding through the broken skin on Cassidy’s back. Other parts might have been ribs. Jesse shut his eyes and tried not to be sick. A couple of cool drops from Cassidy’s chin pattered onto his bare flesh.

“This is gonna hurt me a lot worse than it hurts you,” Cassidy said.

Then Jesse’s head was being pulled to the side. He breathed in hard through his nose. There was warm wetness at first, long enough to make Jesse wonder if that was the worst of it. Then two points of white heat that widened until the skin below Cassidy’s mouth burned like a branding iron.

Cassidy hollered into Jesse’s skin as the bite shifted the shattered bones in his face. He was trying not to pull away, too, hanging on to the pain that linked them.

Jesse’s head was full of firecrackers that burst in the same rhythm as the blood leaving his body. And he couldn’t slow his pulse down; it ramped up all on its own, giving over more and more to Cassidy. In his mind, amid the flashing lights, Tulip reached out and slapped his face. _You damn silly bastard_. He didn’t even register the sting.

_Silly bastard._

_Sentimental bastard_ …

Jesse raised a stiff hand and gripped Cassidy’s good arm so hard his fingers ached. The fireworks were falling below a gray horizon.

_Stop_. It was in his mind but not out of his mouth.

Wonder of wonders, Cassidy picked that moment to break away.

Warmth—Jesse’s own blood—poured down his back, wetting his shirt.

Cassidy did some sort of drunken fumble, at last finding Jesse’s hand and lifting it to lay against the wounds. Jesse figured out that he was meant to apply pressure.

His face somehow collapsed even more, Cassidy toppled backwards to the floor, striking the injured side and choking back a scream.

Jesse sat hard on his heels, his brain cottony and light. With one palm over the bites, he used the other hand to tear at the rest of his shirt buttons. He slipped his arm free of one sleeve, balled the fabric up, and jammed the sweaty, bloody mass against his neck. Air was coursing in and out of his lungs.

On the floor, Cassidy had rolled over to rest on his good side, hand cupped over his nose and mouth, unmoving.

Jesse reached out to him but overbalanced and hit the ground. His peripheral vision had all but disappeared. He only saw the foot of the podium, the axe, the unvarnished wood eagerly drinking up the blood.

 

*

 

It was a long hobble back to their grubby quarters. They could have gotten a car and made a Genesis-drone out of the unwitting driver, but Jesse was desperate for fresh air. The slaughterhouse smell in the museum made his already-iffy stomach do backflips. As for the house itself, it was left as it was. Brad could tear his hair out over the mysterious aftermath of March nineteenth, but he’d never remember a thing. At least he had his marriage.

Cassidy had at least had the presence of mind to haul the battered axe out and drop it in a municipal garbage can a few streets away.

Not much was said on the walk back. Cassidy winced every time a bone shard popped back into place. Jesse had just started to feel the tiny cuts in the small of his back from hitting the ceiling fixture.

Together they were bent, bruised, and doused in blood—a couple of zombies out for a pre-dawn shuffle.

Inside the apartment, nothing could be heard but the TV: unintelligible words and then a scratchy laugh track, over and over. Jesse lurched to the fridge and pulled it open. The smell wasn’t great but there was a half-carton of orange juice that was still good. He tipped it back and pounded it, cold juice running down his chin. It hit his system fast, evening things out some.

On the table, the note for Tulip lay untouched.

“Toilet,” Cassidy said, ushering Jesse along.

In the apartment’s single bathroom, Jesse set the empty carton down on the radiator.

“Mind if I ‘ave first go?” Cassidy asked. “I’m gettin’ a bit sticky.”

Easing into the glow the sugary juice provided, Jesse nodded.

Cassidy flicked on the shower. Water thumped and groaned in the old pipes. He started to strip off. There was an ugly gash in the fabric of his shirt, but underneath it now was nothing but a curve of new, pink skin, crepey and fragile but fully knitted.

“I can see you,” Jesse said, searching his slowed-down thoughts for the reason why he’d said it.

In blood-soaked undergarments, Cassidy turned around. “Huh?”

Jesse pointed. “In the mirror.” He honestly couldn’t recall ever been in the same room with Cassidy _and_ a mirror, though he was sure it had to have happened sometime.

Cassidy tried to stifle his laugh, probably for Denis’s sake. “Yeah, that one’s a right ol’ crock o’ shite. So’s the stake-through-the-heart bit. An’ if I had a problem with crosses an’ such, we wouldn’t be talkin’ right now.” He stepped into the tub, then pulled the rattling yellow shower curtain. The ruined briefs were tossed out, landing by Jesse’s feet.

As Cassidy scrubbed, humming something ( _Rocket Man_?), Jesse looked ahead with half-lidded eyes, watching his own reflection. One sleeve still partially on, the muscles of that arm going numb from holding the rest of the shirt in place. Blood that could have been either his or Cassidy’s drying and cracking a snakeskin pattern on his chest. He scraped at it with a fingernail, sending burgundy flakes floating down on currents of steam. Jesse closed his eyes and leaned back against the peeling wallpaper.

He must have drifted off for a minute or so.

Cassidy was out of the shower, a ratty towel slung low on his hips.

Jesse’s hand had slipped, but his shirt was still glued in place. As gently as he could, he used his fingertips to nudge the fabric away from the skin, expecting a flood at any second. But the shirt lifted away and dropped to the tiles.

“Lemme have a look, then,” Cassidy said. He had scruff on his chin and he smelled like soap.

Tempted for a moment to push him away, Jesse gave in and tilted his head.

Cassidy tugged on his arm. “Come into the light.”

Jesse could hear the faint hum of the bulb over his head, felt shower-warm fingertips on his shoulder.

“Stopped bleedin’. That’s good. Can’t tell much more ‘til it’s clean, but they usually heal fast. Small surface area.”

Jesse had to wonder how and when he had picked up that knowledge.

Cassidy patted his bicep. “Rinse. But don’t scrub it.”

Shrugging him off, Jesse said, “Been hurt before. I’m not an idiot.” Irritated, he turned toward the shower and started unbuckling his belt. More than a little of the blood had reached the waistband, but he might could save the black jeans. The shirt was toast. Jesse had liked that shirt, too—the little silverplate tips on the collar points and their fake Native American designs. The buttons probably hadn’t been real pearl, either. But most of them were scattered over the gore-soaked floor at the Axeman of New Orleans Museum, and that was a shame.

Toeing off his filthy boots (those would have to be washed, too) and stretching his back made the little cuts there itch. He ran a hand over the area, feeling his way blind. They were mostly small and scabbed over; maybe one or two still had little shards ground in. He hoped they would work their way out. In elementary school, before Dad’s funeral and Angelville, Jesse knew a kid who had a broken-off number two pencil lead stuck in the meat of his palm, between the thumb and first finger. He used to brag about it, telling everyone he met. It had looked like a gray dot, an ugly freckle. But when you pinched the skin the way he showed you, you could feel the tiny bump. Kid said it didn’t hurt anymore, but it creeped Jesse right the hell out. He didn’t want to have somebody run their hands up his back and feel a sliver of glass all grown into his skin.

_Tulip_. That “somebody” would be  _Tulip_.

Denis’s showerhead was crusted over with limescale but the water was plenty hot. It made the wounds on his neck throb like a lesser heart. Jesse brushed over the area gently as he could using only his fingertips. Fruit punch-colored water swirled around his feet, shot through with the occasional darker chunk. He let the water sluice into his hair and fall over his face.

The door was closed and he was alone when he opened the curtain. A towel—not fresh by any means but at least unused—sat folded on the toilet seat. Jesse shook out as much of the mothball scent as he could, then dried off his face and hair. He had to crane a little bit to see the bite mark in the mirror, hesitant to stretch the skin. The two punctures were white at the outer edge and deep red in the center, but they weren’t raised, and the area of skin around them looked fine.

Cassidy’s mouth had been shockingly warm. Weren’t vampires supposed to be cold? Another myth, then. Did books and movies get anything right?

_You’re a puny title and a book away from illiterate white trash, Jesse Custer_. Demons were supposed to say things to rile you up. Dig in your history and pull out the stuffing, hang your shame on the line. What did the books and movies get right about Heaven and Hell, either?

Jesse finished drying and wrapped the towel around his waist. He smeared his hand through the fog on the mirror and looked at his face. Arranged the same way it always had been. He couldn’t read Genesis in his features.

_Monster_ _don’t mean no movie show critter_ , said the voice of Marie L’Angelle in his head. _Monster means ‘sign.’ Signs and wonders, sez the Book. A taste of things to come._

He could have used Genesis to stop Cassidy, but he hadn’t. Jesse leaned in to breathe over the glass, and his face disappeared in the fog.

It was much cooler in the hallway. In the guest bedroom, Cassidy was laid out on the bed, still in his towel, right in Tulip’s spot. He had his eyes closed and hands resting with fingers interlaced over his belly. His chest didn’t rise or fall.

“Don’t do that,” Jesse said. “You look dead.”

One eye opened. “I _am_ dead.”

Fighting with himself for a second, Jesse gave up and settled down on the bed, too. He folded his hands over his belly and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. “Could’ve gone better,” he said.

“Could’ve gone worse.” Cassidy paused. “I owe ye.”

“Yeah,” Jesse told him. “You do.”

“Yer first demon?”

“Yeah.”

“Mine, too,” said Cassidy.

The window by the bed was open a crack to let the night air in. Some ridiculously early-rising bird sang a few confused notes before settling down.

“Just so I get this straight—” Jesse began.

“Yeah?”

“You biting me doesn’t...I mean, I’m not gonna…”

“Turn?” Cassidy asked. “No. No way. If that was the case there’d be lots more o’ my kind runnin’ around.”

Jesse let his shoulders relax, trying to keep it subtle.

“You’d’ve had ta have some o’ my blood, too. Fer that ta happen. Ye’ll jus’ heal up in a coupla days an’ everything’ll be back ta normal.”

“Whatever that is,” Jesse said.

“If ye want me to do the explainin’ ta Tulip, I can. Ye saved my life. Simple as that, really.”

“I don’t wanna talk about Tulip right now.” With the words out of his mouth, surprising though they were, Jesse found they were true. At least for the time being. When he looked over, he saw Cassidy had closed his eyes again and lay silent, likely as not to avoid putting his foot in his mouth. “Don’t fall asleep,” said Jesse. “Next to the window, I mean. Sun comes up in a couple hours.”

“Wasn’t plannin’ on sleepin’,” Cassidy said without opening his eyes. “I’m an old hand at this. Been doin’ it fer three times as long as ye’ve been alive.”

Part of Jesse’s visions for the future, as long back as he could remember, included getting old someday. Setting down roots, having a couple of kids in a place where people had potluck suppers and Fourth of July parades and left bread cooling on the windowsill. Still _was_ part of the plan, even though it seemed like he’d tried twice and fucked it up both times.

Carve out his niche, settle in it...and come to find out someone’s not on the same page. Or everything blows up. Or the Great and Benevolent Lord of All, Alpha and Omega, goes AWOL.

If Jesse got gray and wrinkly and was still chasing His Holy Ass all over creation, he was gonna blow a gasket. Scouring the world, never staying in one place as the years ticked by.

“You ever get tired of it?” Jesse asked Cassidy.

A long few moments drew out between them. “D’ye sometimes feel like yer watchin you doin’ the things ye do—through yer own eyes—but what’s goin’ on out there doesn’t line up wit’ what’s in yer head?” He didn’t stop for an answer. “Ye do some things so long ye don’t hafta think about ‘em anymore. An’ meanwhile yer brain is workin’ away on somethin’ else. When ye look out next, shite’s just got away from ye. An’ y’either hafta shut down the machinery or do somethin’ ta kick yerself outta yer head. Second one’s a lot easier ta do.”

Jesse wasn’t entirely sure he understood, and it was an itchy feeling, like looking at a math problem with too many _x’_ s or _n'_ s. “How do you line it back up?”

“No idea,” said Cassidy. “Maybe I’m jus’ one o’ them that needs extra time ta figure things out. Gotta fuck it up more than the average person before I get it right.”

“You got the time to, I guess.”

“Right. Sure.”

They lay on the bed, Jesse’s hands going up and down with the rise and fall of his breath. The wail of a faraway siren rose and fell, too. There were probably people sweeping cups and confetti out of the gutters of the French Quarter.

Cassidy broke the silence with a forced laugh. “Listen ta us, talkin’ all philosophical. Guess mortal peril brings it out o’ ye.”

“Your back okay?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, sure,” said Cassidy. “Right as rain. Not to say it didn’t hurt like a bastard. Chopped with me own axe. Hardly fair.” He trailed off, seeing Jesse raise his hand to skim over the bite.

He set the pads of his first two fingers against each puncture. They were flat and dry.

“How’s yer neck?” Cassidy asked.

Jesse held up the hand for him to examine. “No blood.”

“No blood,” came the quiet echo. Cassidy reached up and drew Jesse’s hand closer.

Nicotine-stained fingers held Jesse’s palm, flexed his thumb back and forth, gently pinched the skin in between. Jesse looked up, following the edges of the map that patches of mildew had charted on the ceiling. A puff of chilly air from the window tumbled across his body, making the muscles of his stomach tense up and his skin prickle. The artery below the wounds in his neck fluttered. Cassidy’s mouth was warm and wet around his forefinger. He might have wondered again at the disconnect, but Jesse was just about done with thinking. Some of him craved the blankness of sleep, but it crumbled against the other part that knew sleep wasn’t coming.

A car slipped by below, bumping over the alleyway ruts. Cassidy’s front teeth scraped gently against Jesse’s knuckle; his tongue was soft and slick. Jesse’s finger met the edge of one of the fangs, felt the tapering to its lethal point.

Cassidy guided another finger into his mouth alongside the first, making a small, low noise as he did.

Jesse shifted a little, rolling onto one shoulder. He saw tattooed swirls and figures on skin, under a fine dusting of hair. The dark, open mouth of the window and its peeling frame. Shutting his eyes, he rested his palm against Cassidy’s prickly chin. Slowly, he pushed until his closest knuckles touched Cassidy’s lips and he could press his fingertips against the back of his throat. He got no objection. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Cassidy tightened his hold on Jesse’s wrist, giving a hum of pleasure that Jesse could feel through the bones of his hand.

The whole time, Jesse was deciding on whether or not to look. His high-level thinking was over and done with for at least a few hours, but there was the matter of Proinsias Cassidy (the often drunk, self-serving, fickle, really-kind-of-a-dirtbag Cassidy) sucking on his fingers and it being something he _liked_. Opening his eyes slightly, Jesse studied Cassidy’s face. No scars—but of course there wouldn’t be. High cheekbones. Eyelashes that were long and dark, but with translucent tips that caught the dirty-looking overhead light like fiber optics.

He pulled his hand back—not too much—and Cassidy opened his eyes, as well. For a second, he clung tight to Jesse’s wrist, but then gave in and let it slide from his grip.

Without realizing he was holding his breath, Jesse traced the wetness on his fingertips over Cassidy’s bottom lip, corner to corner and back again. There seemed nothing else to do but stop there, frozen. He expected there to be words. Mostly for Cassidy to have them. Cassidy was always the one who could take things from uncomfortable to a version of normal everyone could settle on and not be too put out.  

I-Just-Had-My-Fingers-in-Your-Mouth Jesse and You-Just-Had-Your-Fingers-in-My-Mouth Cassidy could shuffle a little and clear their throats, and then continue down pretty much the same path as before.

But he said nothing. And Jesse couldn’t make words happen, either. Somewhere in there, between the next little gust of wind and Jesse letting his breath out, there was a hand at the back of his neck. He nearly got a mouthful of his own wet fingers. Then it was all strange closeness: warmth from soap-scented skin, lips, the brush of stubble. Jesse made a little noise—it might have been surprise—against Cassidy’s mouth. Then he took Cassidy’s bottom lip between his teeth. Fingers tightened at his nape, but he let go after a second or two. No damage done.

There were little breaths against Jesse’s mouth, lips brushing his, only brushing. But chasing around sighs and touches wasn’t going to cut it for very long. Jesse cupped the back of Cassidy’s skull and hauled him close. They were mashed against each other until Cassidy opened his mouth and let Jesse in. Teeth clacked together. It sent a little tingle of pain up into Jesse’s nose, but he brushed it off.

Where Jesse had expected the dirty-penny taste of blood on Cassidy’s tongue he found...nothing. No taste at all. And under the cheap soap smell there seemed to be no particular scent to Cassidy’s skin, either. What was Cassidy smelling on him—his breath? His skin?

_Maybe the blood underneath._

Cassidy would flinch slightly whenever Jesse flicked his tongue over one or the other of his fangs. Almost an apology. But Jesse—or at least Jesse’s body—had already made up a new category where the feeling wasn’t strange. There was _kissing women_ (which was good), there was _kissing men_ (which he didn’t have any experience with but was also fine). And there was _kissing Cassidy_ , which was sort of a combination of the two: broad shoulders and scruff, but also soft lips and soft hands.

The teeth, the not-smell—they were already familiar.

The room was growing warmer, the air hottest in the slim space between them. Jesse slid his hand down to Cassidy’s chest, then under his arm, where the tuft of hair was dry. For the first time, Jesse was a little self-conscious knowing that his armpits were damp, that there was sweat in the small of his back. When the scratchy towel at his waist began to come loose, he tensed up, taking shallow breaths to keep it in place. The wrap only slipped further, and he pulled his hand away from Cassidy’s waist to keep it together.

Being propped up on the opposite elbow was uncomfortable. Jesse sagged backwards against the mattress.

With a long-fingered hand on his cheek, Cassidy followed him down. He kissed the corner of Jesse’s slack mouth.

Jesse felt breath on his ear—only as much as necessary to form the words.

“I won’t bite ye.”

It was said in a serious, almost solemn way. A contract rather than a tease. Since the bite, almost everything had been too cautious for someone like Cassidy. Or at least the Cassidy he thought he knew. And now, acting like Jesse was something fragile that one careless move would split. He had never once in his life been treated like something breakable. Growing up in the country was rough by nature. Though he was a good man, John Custer hadn’t been one to coddle. Gran’ma and Jody _wanted_ him broken, as many times as it took. And Tulip, she was the kind of tough that demanded tough in return.

Cassidy was licking up Jesse’s neck to the edge of his jaw. It felt even better because Jesse knew what was coming. The hot tongue running over the tiny puncture wounds pulled some kind of distressed noise from his throat at the same time it stood his hair on end. One hand clutched at Cassidy’s back and the other gripped the towel tight. If he hadn’t been getting hard before, by God, he was now.

When Cassidy did it again, Jesse had to squeeze his eyes shut. His pulse sped up and it was hard to take a breath. A warm tongue found the hollow of his throat. Cassidy’s hand on his chest was feverish but dry.

Jesse’s hips rose up off the mattress when Cassidy sucked on one nipple and pinched the other. Part of the towel slid away from his thigh. He pulled in air through his teeth to keep from swearing.

With Jesse’s hand tangled in his still-wet hair, Cassidy peppered kisses down his heaving chest, his belly, pressing his lips into the dark line that led down from Jesse’s navel and disappeared below the ratty terrycloth.

Just about then, Jesse decided that set of teeth was just a little too close to sensitive areas for comfort. As much as he wanted to slide into a warm mouth at that point, he reached down instead and grabbed Cassidy’s wrist, tugging. “C’mere.”

Cassidy was pliant, almost liquid, slotting his knee in between Jesse’s thighs and moving back up the length of his body. It became quite obvious that Cassidy had lost his own towel a while ago; Jesse just hadn’t been paying much attention, concentrating on feeling and letting the mechanics slide.

Cassidy was hard against him. Jesse’s own erection was penned in by the rise of a hip bone. While Cassidy was gangly-looking in his odd mix of clothes, Jesse found him substantial and solid and warm when they were skin-to-skin. He traced the ridge of his spine from neck to tailbone, felt his shoulder blades moving.

His hand against Jesse’s cheek, Cassidy caught him in another kiss, less hesitant now when Jesse teased the point of a fang with his tongue. When Cassidy ground his hips down, Jesse couldn’t help but gasp and push back against the mattress, earning soft lips on his bared throat.

He slid his hands down to clutch at Cassidy’s ass, urging him on. The contact felt amazing, but before long it wouldn’t be enough. Jesse growled his frustration and sunk his teeth into Cassidy’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to break skin, but Cassidy drew in a sharp breath.

“Tell me what ye want,” he said.

There were pictures in Jesse’s head, but they flickered by too fast to match up with words. He could talk filth to Tulip just fine—bring her in close and whisper everything he planned on doing in terms that would make a whole congregation faint if he used them in the pulpit. As a rule, Jesse had trouble shutting up, but it was almost like a word misplaced would break the moment, might even send the sunrise pouring through the window and blowing everything to ash.

“Whatever ye want, Jess. I’ll give it to ye,” Cassidy said. “Whatever ye want.”

The words struck Jesse deep in his chest. In his experience, people didn’t often give for the sake of it. Not unless they wanted something in return. Either that or they just _took_. With Genesis, Jesse could take more than he ever could, more than anybody alive. He shut his eyes tight. “You don’t owe me. That shit I said before—”

Cassidy shushed him. “It’s not about that.” He licked over the bite marks again.

Jesse’s cock was aching. He palmed Cassidy’s ass and slipped a finger into his cleft. The low groan was the answer he needed. Jesse raised his hand and pushed the finger past Cassidy’s lips again, letting him wet it down. As he pulled his hand away, there was a twinge of sharp regret that he couldn’t fuck that mouth. But Cassidy made a soft noise and pushed his face into the crook of Jesse’s neck as Jesse reached down again to stroke him, and it was all fine.

Cassidy was hot and smooth and tight inside when Jesse slipped his fingertip in. He pushed backward into the pressure, his cock twitching against Jesse’s abdomen. Jesse could only make shallow movements with the finger, but Cassidy was melting into them, his spine in a smooth curve.

Jesse ran his hand over Cassidy’s cheek. “Hold up,” he said softly. He had to half-twist and reach to get close to the small, hard-sided suitcase that Tulip had left by the head of the bed. The feeling of Cassidy’s fingers wrapping his cock in a firm grip made Jesse lose hold of the clasp. He fumbled through silky underwear, shoes, and murder mystery paperbacks until he found what he was looking for, then handed off the small plastic bottle of lubricant so he could haul himself back up on the bed.

“Turn over.” Jesse settled himself on his side, facing the window, Cassidy’s back against his chest. He flipped the cap off the bottle and upended it. Placing a kiss over an inked figure on Cassidy’s shoulder, he pressed his finger in again, slowly, all the way.

Jesse tucked his arm underneath Cassidy’s neck and held him tight across the chest as he slid his finger in and out. The tangles of hair at the base of Cassidy’s skull tickled his nose and lips, some artificial scent from the shampoo still clinging there. Jesse brushed over a nipple then pinched it. His flushed cock drew a smear of shining wetness on Cassidy’s skin. Jesse pulled almost all the way out, then tucked another finger alongside the first and slid them in.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Cassidy breathed. His back bowed, hips pushing back, drawing the fingers deeper.

Jesse worked until the muscles in his forearm burned, sometimes twisting a little, opening him up. He placed his other hand lightly over Cassidy’s throat, feeling the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple, picking up vibrations from the low noises he was making.

When Jesse pulled his hand away, Cassidy did nothing short of _whine_.

The little bottle was behind them on the bedspread. Jesse flipped it open and let out some of the cool liquid into the hollow of his hand. Getting his other arm free, he rolled Cassidy over to his stomach. A tap to the sensitive skin of his inner thighs and he spread his legs apart. Jesse smoothed the palmful of liquid over his cock, even that much contact making him wince.

He let out a long breath, lined himself up, and began to enter. Cassidy was tight around his cock, but there was no real resistance. He pressed in flush with a grunt.

After a second to catch his breath, Jesse lowered himself down and rolled his hips, pushing deeper. Cassidy cried out, hands scrambling for purchase against the bedcovers.

“Fuck,” Jesse muttered. “C’mon.” He rocked gently, barely having to thrust as their bodies took care of the motion. “ _Christ_ , Cassidy.” The blasphemy felt perfect. “You feel so fucking good.” He wasn’t sure what—if anything—he wanted to hear, but at least the words were coming back.

Wanting a little more movement, Jesse hooked his fingers around Cassidy’s sharp hip bones and hauled back, bringing him to his hands and knees. He pulled out almost entirely, then sunk back in to the hilt, making Cassidy groan. A couple more of the long and leisurely thrusts left him squirming.

“Jesse.”

The way his name sounded then made Jesse sure it was impossible for him to hear it any other way from then on.

“I need ta—”

Jesse understood what he was after. “Wait,” he said. Heading off any complaint, he slid his arm around Cassidy’s waist and wrapped his cock in a firm grip. The smooth skin had an odd slide to it. A few confused moments passed before Jesse realized it was a foreskin—something that he, as a red-blooded Texan, didn’t possess. It gave a certain ease to things, though. He began to stroke, imagining what he himself liked and trying to duplicate it.

Either it was working or Cassidy was too close to the edge to care. He choked out, “Yeah. Jus’ like that.”

Jesse sped up his strokes, all the while pushing in deep.

“Ah, Jaysus.” Cassidy’s voice was thin and tight. “So close…”

“Come on,” Jesse whispered. “Come for me.”

And Cassidy did, calling out, arching his back and clenching in erratic rhythm around Jesse’s cock.

Now free to chase his own pleasure, Jesse fucked him through the last shudders, building a strong rhythm. He ran his hands over Cassidy’s back, gripped his ass, spread him apart to watch the slick movement where their bodies were joined.

“Please,” Cassidy said.

It might have been the first time Jesse had heard it come out of his mouth. “Want me to come?”

“Wanna see yer face.”

The words made Jesse falter. He took a breath, then pulled out.

Cassidy’s back hit the mattress hard, the old bed springs sounding tortured. His hair was a disaster, his face flushed, lips wet and open, half-smiling. He breathed hard, though it might have been for show.

Regardless, the effect was incredible. Jesse considered for a second finishing himself off right then, coming on Cassidy’s lips and chin, down his chest and belly. Instead, he swung one of Cassidy’s long legs over his shoulder, lifted his hips and slammed into him again.

Cassidy reached out to pull Jesse closer, but Jesse grabbed his wrists and pushed his hands back down, pinning them to the bed.

Angled deep, caught up again in making Cassidy sigh and curse and squirm, Jesse thrust hard, over and over. The rickety headboard was rattling, the springs howled. He hoped the TV was nice and loud, because even if Denis hammered on the door, Jesse wasn’t about to stop until he was satisfied.

Even the sight of Cassidy—through his lingering pleasure—studying his face didn’t put him off. A droplet of sweat crept down the bridge of his nose and fell to land, shining, on Cassidy’s breastbone.

Jesse’s heart was pounding. He sucked in a quick breath. “Say my name again.”

“Ye like it?”

Jesse nodded, another bead of sweat falling and bursting on the skin below. “Gonna come.”

Cassidy pried a hand out of Jesse’s loosening grip, and reached up to smooth a hank of sweaty hair out of his face. “Jesse.”

The tension that had been building within him released all at once. Jesse clutched at Cassidy’s thigh and came hard inside him. His cry was almost a shout, but he was past caring about noise.

The strength in his elbows gave out as the aftershocks died down. Cassidy drew him closer, stroking fingertips along his spine, catching an earlobe between his lips. His cheek resting on Cassidy’s shoulder, Jesse let his heart rate even out, let the tension trickle from his muscles.

Cassidy didn’t seem at all put off by the exhausted weight draped over him; no need to struggle for breath when breath wasn’t necessary.

“That ever put people off?” Jesse asked.

“What?”

“The whole ‘not breathing’ thing.”

When Cassidy laughed, it shook them both. “Does it put _you_ off?”

“No.” Gone soft now, Jesse slipped free of Cassidy’s body and shifted his weight over to one side. He struggled to find a place to rest on the skinny bicep, his arm still draped over Cassidy’s chest, wet crotch pressed against his hip. Brushing sweat from the scruff below his bottom lip, Jesse sighed. “I probably stink.”

“Ye smell th’exact same way ye taste.” Cassidy traced his jaw.

“Long as that’s good,” Jesse said. He tried to trace back the events of the night, and only got as far as the shower. “I left all those bloody clothes in the bathroom.”

“Nobody’ll notice. Y’always look like ye walked straight outta Johnny Cash’s closet.”

Jesse fought the urge to yawn. A couple of birds in the scraggly trees outside had started shouting at each other, call and response. It was, Jesse realized, a Sunday morning.

“Yeah,” Cassidy was saying. “Me an’ Johnny shot up in a ladies’ toilet. The gents’ was blocked up.”

“Really?”

“No. Never met the man.” There was a sliver of sadness in the words.

Jesse was pretty sure it had nothing to do with never having met Johnny Cash. “How do you know Denis?”

Cassidy stared at the ceiling. “He’s my son.”

“He’s—”

“Old, yeah. Maybe dyin’. Lived hard, he has. Not exactly havin’ the best o’ role models.”

Any way he played with the geometry of it in his mind, Jesse couldn’t seem to link the white-haired recluse in the other room with Cassidy. “Tulip and me—” he started. He took a breath. It wasn’t just that her name seemed foreign in the room, but there was a lot of baggage loaded behind it. “Me and Tulip, we tried to have a baby. A while ago. Well, _I_ tried. Losing one ain’t the same as not having one, I guess.”

Cassidy huffed softly. “Ye lose anyway, whether it’s them doin’ the dyin’ or you.”

Minutes stretched out between them, filled with breaths and the rushing-air sound of the occasional car.

“Sunrise soon,” Jesse said. It was the hard line coming down between what had happened and what needed to be done to go on after it. He wasn’t certain on either account.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://nookienostradamus.tumblr.com/), if you care to.
> 
> All the thanks in the world to my beta and buddy, [vampireinvitations](http://archiveofourown.org/users/vampireinvitations/pseuds/vampireinvitations/)!


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